In November of 1946, a young Indian student participated in a demonstration against apartheid at the South African Consulate in New York. The demonstration had been organised by the Council on African Affairs, an association headed by Paul Robeson that opposed racism, apartheid and colonialism. The student, ES Reddy, went on to become one of foremost participants of the international struggle against Apartheid in South Africa and friend to the leadership of the South African liberation struggle.
Reddy was born 100 years ago on July 1, 1924, in Pallapalli in Andhra Pradesh and grew up in the town of Gudur. He came from a family of freedom fighters. Both his parents were followers of Gandhi. Reddy himself became influenced by Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialist ideas as a student. Both Nehru and Gandhi played a significant role in his thinking.
After going to New York, Reddy came in contact with the leading thinkers of the African-American struggle for freedom, WEB Du Bois and Paul Robeson. He became very good friends with the executive director of the Council on African Affairs, Alpheus Hunton.
Nehru had articulated India’s opposition to the racial policies of the South African state even before India formally gained independence. In 1946, Vijay Laxmi Pandit, the head of India’s delegation to the United Nations, brought the racial discrimination of the South African State to the agenda of the General Assembly.
Indian freedom fighters saw their struggle against British colonialism as linked to the problem of world racism and war. The central problem of the 20th century, as Du Bois had said, was the problem of the colour line. Thus, Reddy was naturally drawn to the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. He would later say, “For me, the freedom of African countries was an extension of the colonial revolution in Asia…We had a duty to help them to get free.”
Reddy joined the Special Committee Against Apartheid at the United Nations as Principal Secretary in 1963, soon after it was established. At this point, he had already been working in the United Nations for 14 years. The committee was boycotted by all the Western powers (the first such boycott) in an attempt to render it ineffective.
Reddy became the heart of the committee, working relentlessly and making sure of its effectiveness. He was most often at the centre of all activities of the committee. However, Reddy was no ordinary United Nations official. He was a revolutionary working for the South African Liberation struggle from within the United Nations.
One of the activities that he undertook without precedent was to hold receptions for the leaders of liberation struggles. In 1963, he held a reception for Oliver Tambo, the president of the African National Congress and one of the main leaders of the struggle along with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Over the years,. Reddy would develop a close friendship with Tambo.
He also held receptions for Amilcar Cabral, leader of the liberation struggle in Guinea, in 1972, a few months before his assassination, and for Marcelino dos Santos from Mozambique. These receptions were often organised with his own finances.
On trips to Africa, Reddy would also often meet and consult with liberation leaders. In 1964, he visited Algiers, which had become a center of liberation struggles, in 1964. The next year he visited Dar Es Salaam.
The special committee had a whole range of activities. They published booklets, organised conferences and commemorations, protested against political prisoners being executed, put together defense and aid funds and helped organise boycotts. It planned commemorations of Martin Luther King, Du Bois, South African activist Chief Luthuli and others.
The special committee also worked closely with the World Peace Council, an organisation that advocated nuclear disarmament and peaceful co-existence, among other things. Reddy was good friends with Romesh Chandra, the president of the World Peace Council. “People in India were convinced, Jawaharlal Nehru and others were convinced that one of the root causes of war was racism,” he said.
The World Peace Council and the Special Committee worked in close cooperation in the struggle against Apartheid. Many leaders of the African National Congress including Tambo were members of the council. Romesh Chandra and Reddy were both awarded the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo by the South African government for their contribution to South Africa in an illustrious list that includes only three other Indians: Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon.
After he retired in 1985, Reddy spent a substantial amount of time in documentation and research. He did unparalleled research on Gandhi’s time in South Africa and on India-South Africa relations. Reddy would speak of the need for further historical research on India’s relationship with South Africa and Africa in general.
He would point out the special role that India played in the South African struggle. In a memorial lecture in 1996 for Yusuf Dadoo in New Delhi, he said “I believe that non-alignment proclaimed by India…assumed its deeper content because of the attitudes of the Western governments towards colonialism and South African racism.”
India was the first government to contribute funds for South African political prisoners, to bestow an international honour to Nelson Mandela and many Indians participated in mobilising international support for the South African cause.
At the same time, Reddy said that Gandhi himself was South Africa’s gift to India. Gandhi spent 21 years in South Africa and it was here that he shaped his philosophy and tactics of struggle. Reddy would defend Gandhi against those who criticised his role in South Africa. He particularly emphasised the contact Gandhiji had with the indentured laborers in South Africa and how that shaped him.
To the critique of certain Marxists that Gandhi acted as an agent of capitalists, he wrote that Gandhiji “gave up his legal practice and identified himself with the ‘coolies’ in his way of life more than most Marxists have been able to”.
He also argued against the criticism that Gandhi did not promote a joint struggle of Indians with Africans. “The critics ignore the fact that Gandhiji dedicated himself to the struggle for the dignity of the Indian community…and hoped to return to India to serve his motherland,” he wrote. “He made no pretensions to lead the Africans – the sons and daughters of the soil – to liberation; that would have been quite improper.”
I met and interviewed ES Reddy in 2018 and one of the last questions I asked him was what he sees as his legacy. With a modesty that he was known for, he refused to speak about his legacy but did mention that those in the Palestinian struggle often quote him.
Indeed, the Special Committee had organised an International Conference on the Alliance between South Africa and Israel in 1983. Israel had a close military alliance with the Apartheid government and provided armaments as well as nuclear technology to the apartheid government. The South African government today has taken the brave step of bringing a case to the International Court of Justice on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
There is no doubt that ES Reddy would have supported the Palestinian liberation struggle today as he had done previously. He imagined a world free of all vestiges of racism, colonialism and imperialism. This was a cause towards which he worked with unparalleled dedication and courage. His legacy today is to continue to fight for such a world.
Archishman Raju is a scientist based in Bangalore associated with the Gandhi Global Family and Intercivilizational Dialogue Project.